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Talk:Alternative Plans/@comment-46.146.142.2-20130202230917/@comment-26331553-20150422122945
"We have arrived, and it is now that we perform our charge. In fealty of the God-Emperor, our undying lord, and by the grace of the Golden Throne, I declare Exterminatus on the Imperial world of Typhon Primaris. I hereby sign the death warrant of an entire world, and consign a million souls to oblivion. May Imperial justice account in all balance. The Emperor protects." -Inquistorial declaration of Exterminatus. Actually, you've got that wrong. From a coldly logical point of view, Operation Babylon was probably the best (terrible) choice available to humanity from a selection of truly nightmarish options, and certainly the most rational decision based on the information that Human High Command possessed. See, even a cursory look at the timeline of Unlimited shows that the conventional tactics advocated by the Paneuropean/Asian nations were not working and there is no evidence to suggest that they would start working before everyone got OM NOM NOM'd and humanity was destroyed and forgotten. However, since this defeat was still several years away (probably about a decade until final defeat in North America), it is harder to see just how screwed we were without a hard objective look. But because that defeat was still some time away, we still had a lot of resources left. Thus, Alternative V was not a random betrayal of the human race or a simple and childish temper tantrum, but rather a carefully calculated last roll of the dice for all the marbles while we still had the chips to play the game. A good comparison for this would probably be Robert E. Lee's Second Invasion of the North. Lee knew it was an incredibly risky plan, but he believed he had a chance of success. More importantly, he knew that staying his present course of waging a defensive campaign was doomed to long-run failure due to the Union's massive logistical advantages (North OP, nerf nao). Knowing this, he knew he had to take a shot for victory while he had the chance, and from a strategic/''realpolitik'' point of view, it was likely the correct decision. Granted, he lost that Campaign, but the fact of that loss probably had little outcome on his ultimate defeat, because that fact had already been decided by the innate advantages of the North. The final point is the moral consideration is that, when fighting and losing a omnicidal, implacable enemy (the BETA) and thus facing complete annihilation as a species, strategic reasoning IS moral and ethical reasoning. Whatever is the best course of action to defeat such an enemy is the just and right thing to do. Any loss of human life that might come about as a result of such a course of action is a tragedy, of course, but cannot reasonably be held against the course of action, because, in a situation this bad, they were dead already. The second major point to consider is that the only reason Operation Babylon goes as poorly as it does is because of an Outside Context Problem (Disclaimer: I really don't like the Culture, but Banks knows his craft, and this is the best way to describe the concept). Simply put, G-Bombs had been detonated before, and there was nothing from those tests to indicate that the gravatic resonance effect that screwed everything up would happen. We had no way to know those consequences would occur, and thus the decision to go forward with Operation Babylon must be judged based on the information available at the time, not with our exterior knowledge. And finally, even knowing its full consequences, Babylon is the right call, because at least it saves someone. Fighting to the end kills everyone.